Getting out the AAPI vote in California

LOS ANGELES (Oct. 30, 2014) — With election day approaching on November 4, Asian Americans Advancing Justice – Los Angeles (Advancing Justice – LA) announced critical efforts to mobilize thousands of Asian American and Pacific Islander voters and protect their right to vote. In addition, Advancing Justice – LA released a new report highlighting the growing influence of Asian American voters in California, but noting lower rates of voter turnout among youth and immigrants.

Growing Impact and Importance of Asian American and Pacific Islander Voters

A new report released by Advancing Justice – LA shows increasing numbers of Asian Americans registering to vote statewide and documents their growing influence. The report finds that nearly 1.7 million Asian Americans were registered to vote in California as of the 2012 General Election. It also found that Asian American voter registration exceeded the margin of victory in 38 Congressional, State Senate, and State Assembly races during that election.

“As Asian American and Pacific Islander communities continue to grow, so does their ability to affect the outcome of elections,” said Dan Ichinose, demographic research project director at Advancing Justice – LA. “Elected officials can no longer afford to ignore issues critical to our communities like immigration and health care reform.”

However, the report also notes lower voter turnout among Asian American youth and immigrants, underscoring the importance of targeted voter engagement efforts.

The report can be downloaded on the Advancing Justice – LA website.

Getting Out The Asian American and Pacific Islander Vote

For the past six weeks, through the non-partisan “Your Vote Matters! 2014” campaign, Advancing Justice-LA has been targeting thousands of Asian Americans and Pacific Islanders (AAPI) in the Los Angeles area to turn out and vote on Tuesday, November 4th.

Using a multilingual and culturally-appropriate strategy, the “Your Vote Matters! 2014” campaign is partnering with 14 community-based organizations and four youth groups. Over 21 days, volunteers from these groups have been calling voters in 17 languages: Arabic, Bangla, Burmese, Cantonese, Mandarin, Khmer, Tagalog, Hindi, Japanese, Korean, Malay, Urdu, Punjabi, Samoan, Thai, Tongan and Vietnamese. This campaign is the nation’s largest multilingual phone banking effort to “get out the vote” in the AAPI community.

“We find that when voters are asked about the voting process by someone from their own culture and in their own language, they stay on the phone longer and want to have a conversation,” said Tanzila Ahmed, Advancing Justice – LA’s voter engagement manager. “On the flip side, the volunteers making the calls – who range from 14 to 70 years old and are from the community – are finding a certain pride both in their culture and language, in providing help to new voters from their own community. It’s a win-win, both ways you look at it.”

“Civic engagement efforts like these are critical to the Asian American and Pacific Islander community,” said Jaqueline Wu, Policy Manager at Orange County Asian and Pacific Islander Community Alliance (OCAPICA). In partnership with the “Your Vote Matters! 2014” campaign, OCAPICA has been running a similar phone bank based in Garden Grove. “We’ve also been surveying the community to see what issues are important to them – health, education and jobs are the top issues for Orange County voters – so that we can be of better service to them.”

Protecting Asian American and Pacific Islander Voters

To ensure that voters are treated fairly and have access to translated voting materials and bilingual poll workers as required by law, Advancing Justice – LA will send trained volunteers to scores of polling locations across Southern California on Election Day.

“The goal of poll monitoring is to identify and address any problems that arise on Election Day so that voters, including first-time and limited English proficient voters, can assert their right to vote,” says Eugene Lee, democracy project director at Advancing Justice – LA. In Los Angeles County, written and oral language assistance is available under federal law in Chinese, Hindi, Japanese, Khmer, Korean, Spanish, Tagalog, Thai, and Vietnamese (with oral assistance also available in Bengali and Gujarati). In Orange County, language assistance is available under federal law in Chinese, Korean, Spanish, and Vietnamese; under state law, language assistance is available in Hindi, Japanese, Khmer, and Tagalog at select polling locations.

The “Your Vote Matters! 2014” campaign is a project of the Asian Americans Advancing Justice – Los Angeles with the purpose of empowering, mobilizing, and protecting the rights of Asian American, Native Hawaiian and Pacific Islander Voters. Advancing Justice – LA is a 501c3 non-partisan organization that does not advocate on behalf of parties or candidates. However, we will educate voters on select propositions.